CutterJohn, I respectfully disagree.
I don't think there's much doubt that starship interiors are completely doable from a technical perspective. The real question is whether a game will benefit from having interiors and the other features that need to go with them. (The old "but what would you
do with them?" question.)
I'd say 3D interiors can be a good design choice for a game that will include two other features:
- You'll be flying the same complex starship for many, many hours.
- Operating the ship is done indirectly through crew, who need to be managed.
(A third reason to do interiors, which really includes the above two, is if you're making a game from a licensed property that has vessels with interiors. If you're not going to properly implement that part of the license, you have no business making that game.)
Let's consider these two features.
1. If you're going to be trading out ships frequently or managing large fleets, then there's little value in rendering interiors. You won't see them often enough to get value out of the work needed to generate them. Random generation might reduce that cost, but probably not enough to make it worthwhile.
You also don't need interiors if ships are simple things that just move and shoot. In that case, there's nothing worth representing as a physical location that has a function distinct from other ship functions.
Suppose on the other hand that starships are complex things composed of numerous systems with which you can interact in deep ways, and that you'll be flying one particular ship for many in-game hours. In this case, it basically becomes a character -- it's internally complex enough to have its own personality.
When ships are characters, interiors can be valuable because they give you an interface for interacting in multiple different ways with your ship, just like you would with an interesting person. Because these different gameplay interactions are something you'll do a lot of, the cost to implement them in visibly and functionally detailed ways pays itself off by helping each kind of gameplay feel as unique as possible.
What doesn't make sense is having lots of interactions with a complex technological artifact like a starship by mashing a few cooldown-timered buttons. In this case, one might as well be piloting a ship-shaped lump of metal that can spam magic powers. (Which is precisely what Cryptic did in Star Trek Online.) Rendering detailed ship systems through the metaphor of being physical places inside a ship helps make each kind of gameplay mode expressed through those locations more distinctive, and thus more enjoyable.
2. A large ship with multiple physical locations that are dedicated to using distinct ship functions doesn't make sense unless your game will include NPC crew as avatars and crew management gameplay.
If you don't want crew management, you can still have complex ships; you just don't need to render the interfaces as 3D locations. A 2D schematic interface is sufficient if you're going to be the only character actually doing things.
If managing characters as crew is a design goal, however, and you're also going to implement ships as complex systems, then 3D interiors can be the right choice. You have to be ready to also spend the time necessary to implement crew as characters, with personalities, goals, abilities, pathfinding, the AI to manage all those things, and a command interface for setting priorities and letting your crew figure out how to accomplish them.
Those features aren't cheap. But if you do them, then being able to walk through your ship while NPC crew scurry about doing their varied jobs becomes extraordinarily immersive. At that point, you have a "starship simulator."
Again: it's completely true to observe that not everybody would find that kind of thing fun. But you can say that about any form of game. What matters is whether there are enough people who would find it a blast to manage their "hero" starship from the inside with a legendary crew.
If there are enough people like that, then 3D interiors are not only doable, they're an appropriate design goal.
